Sami Berik in Daily Mirror FX3 Preview
Taken from Daily Mirror site http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/wrestling-...h-justice.html
Like Negao, former Pride and Cage Rage competitor Jean Silva is likely to be a crowd favourite, as the Brazilian returns from a devastating knee injury suffered at the hands of a Masakazu Imanari heel hook in March 2008. Silva is also a BJJ black belt, but much like his compatriot Anderson Silva (also a BJJ black belt), he prefers the stand-up game, a course of action which invariably leads to exciting fights.
Just the man to give him such a contest is the unpredictable Sami "The Hun" Berik, who is even more experienced that his opponent, with 40 fights under his belt. The thoughtful, philosophical Berik can't wait for the opportunity to test his skills against one of the best fighters UK MMA has ever seen.
"It's a privilege for me to be fighting Jean Silva," said Berik. "At the end of the day, he's an exciting fighter and he goes for the kill, so it's going to be a lot of fun. It's going to be like a verbal argument; it depends where he takes the first few words, and I'll react to that. It's going to be an action-packed fight, and it's going to be fast-paced.
"Every time I fight is another experience for me on how I understand and look at fighting. As far as this fight goes, I see it as a blank canvas. He's a great fighter on the floor, but he stands as well, and I appreciate that in him as a fighter, that he takes the fight wherever it goes. He can use applicational wing-chun, or a shaolin style - he can do it all.
"One thing I won't do is use heel hooks," Berik sportingly admitted. "Even though he has had a bad knee injury, if I have the power personally to win the fight without causing him any real damage, that's a blessing, and that's what I'll do. And I'm sure that he wouldn't fight unless his knee was tip-top. Now that's he's back, I'm sure he's in shape."
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